The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (14 page)

He is restless, though, a performer who had prepared himself to go, only to find out at the last minute that the show has been canceled. The adrenaline has to go somewhere. He thinks about the clerk, the one who eyed him at check-in. Sometimes he likes a little something on the side, something rough and anonymous and nasty. It's tricky, though, finding someone who won't boomerang back, threaten one of his happy marriages. He can't just sit here in this suite all night as Olive sleeps off her one-bomb drunk. He runs a finger along her jawbone. “I'm going to go out for a meal, let you sleep, okay, precious? And then I'll sleep on the sofa when I get back, so you can have your rest. Big day tomorrow. Our wedding day.”

He really does consider each marriage a big deal, no matter how many times he does it. The women are so happy at that moment, and who can put a price tag on that? To date, his marriages have netted him as little as fifteen thousand dollars and as much as two hundred thousand, and he's proud of the fact that each woman got the same quality job.

He's disciplined. He doesn't go too wild, stays out just late enough to find someone who wants to rid himself of energy as quickly and anonymously as he does. Then he creeps back in and, true to his word, stretches out along the sofa, doesn't even bother to pull out the foldaway bed. Olive will appreciate the gallantry, he thinks.

Could she really be a virgin? She has been coy about her age, which leads him to suspect that she's actually older than she looks. But even if she is ten years older than she looks, she's still on the young side, no more than her late thirties. He hasn't been with a woman that young since—well, ever. Even when he was young, the women tended to be over forty. It takes a woman a few years to amass a nest egg worth pursuing. But Olive is an heiress and an orphan. He has hit the exacta. He deserves it.

He awakens to a hard knock on the door—crap, he should have put the Do Not Disturb hanger on the knob—but before he can call out to warn the maid away, the door is thrown open and there is a sudden flurry that he can barely process in his sleep-dazed state. Voices, hard and emphatic, a trio of men circling him, calling him by his real name.

Calling him by his real name.
The name that comes up on his rap sheet, from back in his hustler days in this very city. The name with a warrant or two, even a few of the earlier marriages. A name he hasn't used for years for that very reason. How do they know his real name?

They cuff him, then begin examining the contents of his wallet, sitting out on the dining room table that so impressed Olive. Olive. Where is she, how has she slept through this? Maybe she went out for breakfast or a café au lait. He will find a way to explain this to Olive. She will bail him out. He just needs to get out of here before she returns, talk to her without any cops around.

“This your credit card?” one of the cops asks, extracting the platinum card that Olive added to her account.

“Yes, and that's my real name, as you see from my ID. I have no idea who Gustave Meckelburg is.” God, what a name. No matter his line of work, he would have dropped that handle.

“Really?” says the cop, a detective, probably fraud or larceny. Whatever name he's ever used, he's never done anything violent, after all, and he can't believe the New Orleans PD cares about his old adventures in vice. “Weird thing is, credit card company says you applied for this online a week ago, but the Social you gave belongs to Gustave Meckelburg. And everything else you provided—your address, your income—turns out to be a straight-up lie. That's frowned upon, but it's so minor compared to the other stuff we have on you, we're not going to sweat it. Although you do owe for this hotel room now that the account has been closed.”

“That's ridiculous. The primary account holder is my fiancée, and all she did was add me. When she returns, she'll clear all this up.”

“Olive Dunne? The one whose name was on the reservation? She skipped, buddy. Doorman put her in a cab about six
A.M.
this morning. Told him her mother was ill.”

“She doesn't even have a mother.”

“We've got a lot to sort out with you,” the cop says, putting his hand on his shoulder. “And we'd like to go over the various infractions in our jurisdiction before we hand you over to the feds.”

“The feds?”

“They've been advised that Gustave Meckelburg has never filed a tax return. They'd kinda like to talk to you about that.”

She has a long layover in the Nashville airport, almost three hours. She changes into jeans and a T-shirt, dumps the suit in a trash can. It smells like him to her, although the odors really belong to Bourbon Street. He smelled okay. Not a surprise, given his line of work. She parks herself in a Starbucks, uses the wireless feed to empty the checking account she set up only a month ago, calls the bank to tell them what's she done. She bends the ATM card she extracted from his wallet early that morning, along with all the cash, and works it back and forth until it breaks in half. She kills out the photos of Olive Dunne's house in the Pacific Palisades, silently thanking the woman for the loan of her name and her home for these last few months, not that the woman will ever know. Then she makes another quick call.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Jordan. Where are you?”

“Heading back to Providence. Ran down to New Orleans over the weekend just for the hell of it.”

“What prompted that impulse?”

“Feeling restless.”

Her mother is a sweet, trusting woman, despite all that has happened, but she knows her daughter well enough to be skeptical of this. Jordan doesn't do much on impulse. “You're still not on that tear about Frankie, are you?”

“Frankie?”

“Thinking he's a con man, or whatever. He loved me, Jordan. You scared him off, making me ask all those questions. He thought I was too suspicious.”

“He did take almost twenty thousand from you.”

“For that hospital he's building in Brazil, Jordan. I don't mind that. It was a good cause.”

“You're right, Mom.” She is right. Twenty thousand is nothing in the scheme of things, and it had served a good cause if it kept her mother from marrying that creep. If her mother had married Gustave Meckelburg—then known as Frank Mercer—he would have taken her for much more. But twenty thousand was still too much to Jordan's way of thinking, and she had put a lot of time and effort into finding out who he was and getting him into a jurisdiction where that mattered. She had learned that bigamy may carry a social stigma, but it didn't fetch much in the way of criminal punishment. But she knew how he had found her mother and she assumed he would find her that way, too, if she baited the hook just right. The hard part had been finding out everything she could about him. But she has always been a patient young woman, the inevitable consequence of her father dying young and leaving behind her sweet but silly mother, who never bothers to read the fine print or question anything too closely.

Jordan says goodbye to her mother and takes a much-folded letter out of her purse, a printout of an e-mail. “Dear Angel,” it begins. “How can machinery match two souls so perfectly? How can this thing of wires and circuits know what is in my heart?” It is the letter that George Middleberg sent her three months ago. It is also, word for word, the letter he sent to her mother eight years ago. If she ever harbored any doubts about what she was doing, they ended the day she received that e-mail.

“I can't wait to take your name,” she told him at the hotel. And so she had. Taken his latest fake name, and returned his real one to him.

Toytown Assorted

PATRICK MCCABE

Y
URI GAGARIN WASN'T
long in space when Golly decided to go up the town. For just the briefest of moments she thought that she'd forgotten her shop book—but then she remembered.

—Silly me, it was in my handbag all along.

Now as she proceeded across the square, she repeated the various items which it was her intention to purchase.

—I have Brasso to get and half a pound of butter, then there's oranges and a tin of Mansion polish. After that it'll be over to the butcher's for a few tender chops. Thank you, Barney, she heard herself say.

Emerging onto the street, who did she encounter only Blossom Foster—a plump lady in a leopard-print coat and stole.

—This Russian fellow. What do you make of all this talk about space?

Golly's response was that she didn't really have any hard or fast views on the subject. But by now her interlocutor had already moved on and was inquiring of Golly as to what her considered opinion might be of Miami. Golly replied by saying that, regrettably, she'd never been.

There were lots of programs on television—
Dragnet
among them,
The Lucy Show
and
Peyton Place
—but for Patsy Murray and his son Boniface,
Mr. Pastry
was the best of them all. He sported round wire-framed spectacles and had a great big thick gray mustache. Such an amount of idiotic antics as he got up to! Always landing in one complicated situation after another. Even though he was Down syndrome, Boniface had no difficulty appreciating the TV funnyman's idiosyncratic sense of humor. As the twelve-year-old boy fanned his fat fingers and pressed them to his face, rolling around the floor in hysterics—it got so bad that Golly had to go over to wipe the mucus and saliva off his nose.

—
Mittur Pay-twee!
he would squeal—repeating it, falsetto—
Mitter Mitter Mitter Pay-twee
!

Patsy had been watching the television too—but only halfheartedly. Being much too busy perusing his newspaper and thinking about the weekend's football.

—Boo! he heard Golly squealing suddenly as he found himself jumping, instinctively placing his hand over his heart.

—Jesus Mary and Joseph, you put the fear of God in me, Golly!

The giddy peal of his wife's laughter began to amuse him then, however, as she swung her bag gaily, tossing back her auburn curls. She had just come back from space, she told him, where she'd been tumbling about like Yuri Gagarin.

—No! she laughed, I'm only joking—I've just been shopping up the town. Would you like a sandwich? I'm just going in to wet a pot of tea. And what about you, Little Boniface Murray? Would you, perhaps, maybe like a nice little cup?

—Waaay! exclaimed Boniface, and Toytoon Torted!

Which, of course, as she knew, meant: Toytown Assorted.

They were his favorite confection of all. Indeed Golly herself liked them very much too. They came in a family-sized cellophane bag. There were little houses and trees and even a church, all coated in the loveliest of tasty icing sugar.

—I can't wait for my Toytown Assorted! cried Golly, clapping her hands. As Boniface scrunched his eyes, pushing out his lip—squirming and chuckling in a delicious self-cuddle of delight.

Peyton Place
was actually on later. But you weren't supposed to watch it—at church the previous Sunday, the parish priest had specifically singled it out.

—Any more of this and Ireland will be in ruins! he had said.

For this reason her hand was seen to twitch whenever it hovered over the dial. Just as she turned it to reveal a hovering of a different kind.

—You can't come in here! protested the woman in the lounge suit—Golly knew it was a lounge suit, for she'd seen them advertised in
Picturegoer
—if anyone hears, don't you know I'm married!

—I know you're married! snapped the man who'd cast the shadow, but darn it to hell I don't care. I'm through with caring, and I know in your heart that so are you!

He grabbed her fiercely as he pressed his lips to hers.

—Let's get away from here—let's go together! she cried.

But already the man had taken off his jacket—and was in the process of tearing at his tie. He was looking at the woman like some kind of wild animal. As he crossed the room and firmly closed the shutters.

—But there's one thing that you and me have got to do first—something I've been longing to do all week!

—Oh, Norman! cried the woman, falling back before him on the bed, scissoring her legs around him as she groaned.

Patsy and Golly were both in bed now—reading. Her husband was inquiring as to whether she wouldn't mind adjusting her position “just a little.”

In order that he might maneuver the bolster. She informed him she was more than happy to do so.

Patsy smiled and returned to his pools coupons—chewing thoughtfully on the end of his pencil.

Without thinking, he suddenly frowned and asked his wife did she think that Newcastle would succeed in holding Chelsea to a draw this coming Saturday.

Golly smiled—and, turning a page of her magazine, told him she didn't know.

—I don't really know anything about football, she said.

Patsy laughed.

—But of course you don't. I got carried away there. I don't know what I was thinking, Golly.

Golly returned to the
Picturegoer
article she had been reading about Miami, Florida. Once you have visited you will never be the same, it said. There was a great big photo of an electric blue sea, with an enormous stretch of white sand and some curtseying palms. The apartments were all painted aqua and seashell pink.

It was there that the author and “her lover” had met, she was informed. It was there she had been united with the man of her dreams. In a place which she described as an “Eden on earth.”

Golly's nails were making indentations on the margins. She wished they were not—but those were the facts. An urge to switch off the wireless and its dreary monotony then compelled her. Instead she coughed and patted her chest.

—The Fosters are going to America, she told her husband.

But he didn't reply—thinking, as he continued to chew on his pencil. Then, when some time had passed, he said:

—Good night.

—Good night, Patsy, he heard his wife reply.

As, with a soft click, the lamp on his side of the room went out.

As Golly lay there, she found herself not in bed or in Cullymore either but standing in the foyer of a plush hotel. With the bellboy close by waiting with her luggage. She knew that, as her husband, Patsy ought to have been with her—but he wasn't. Patsy was at home.

—Will your husband be checking in with you, the Spanish-sounding desk clerk said with a smile.

—No, she replied, I'm on my own.

—Of course, Madam, she heard him say—handing her her room key, smiling again, even more broadly this time.

She remembered to tip the bellboy generously. Because that was the way they did things in the U.S.

When he had departed she kicked off her shoes and threw herself down on the bed with a sigh—flicking the television on with her toe. It was the biggest screen she had ever seen. And guess who was on it? Yuri Gagarin—grinning out from behind his helmet: CCCP. How happy he looked—away off there, out in the galaxy. Then Golly got up and went down to the bar. There was a foreign-looking gentleman seated at the counter, gazing into a tall, colored glass. In her own town you couldn't approach a foreign gentleman. Indeed dare to go near someone who wasn't your husband. Unless they were bent double and well over sixty. But this was America, not Cullymore.

—I'm looking for Blossom Foster, she told the man.

—I'm afraid I don' know, lady, he said.

How lovely that was, to be courteously addressed as “lady.”

—But while you wait, yes—maybe you like a drink?

—Who's offering? astoundingly, she heard herself say. With eyes twinkling.

—Pedro Gonzales, she was told, as the smallish man in the Hawaiian-print shirt treated her to a gentlemanly bow. Why, of course, she told him—she would be delighted to accept his generous offer.

—You're from outta town, no? snapping his fingers as the swarthy barman spread his hands on the marble counter.

—Sure am, she said, again with a twinkle, from
waaay
outta town.

—Me too, said Pedro. In the Siesta Motel on Biscayne Boulevard ees wher' I stay. Every time I come by, that is where I go. They take care of me there. So what's it gonna be? You look like a lady who could use a daiquiri.

—That's exactly what I was going to order.

He made two rabbit's ears of his fingers as she glided effortlessly onto the stool. It was tubular chrome.

—The Siesta Motel, huh? she said.

—Over on Biscayne Boulevard, he replied—and this time it was Pedro's turn to twinkle.

The following day when she woke up, Golly made up her mind to, one way or another, go to Miami. It was to become an imperative—and this was the reason why. It had all begun while she had been blackleading the range. Thinking yet again about what Blossom Foster had been saying about bridge. Her and her stupid cards. What sort of a stupid idea had that been anyway, she asked herself—a bridge session, for God's sake, in the early afternoon. Another stupid plan of Blossom's, what else.

Of course it being the Fosters you were duty-bound to become all excited, as if it was the most original and fascinating idea ever. “Oh, but yes!” you were expected to say. You had to declare yourself privileged because of the invite.

—What a splendid idea! you were expected to squeal.

Then Golly heard the front door closing—it was Boniface, arriving home from school. Which was why she listened with affection as she heard him skidding across the floor. Before bursting into the kitchen with a yelp—tossing his schoolbag into the corner as always, calling out “Babbie! Babbie! Where Babbie!”

He had never been capable of pronouncing
Mammy
properly.

It was a pity about his speech—of course it was, as Blossom Foster had remarked on a number of occasions.

—But I'm sure you have the resources to deal with that, Golly, she had observed.

In spite of herself Golly hated it when Boniface did it—called her “Babbie.” Almost immediately becoming overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and shame.

She wondered, did Blossom ever experience such sensations—of abject worthlessness and self-loathing? No—of course she didn't. And if she did, she could always go off to Florida and forget them.

—We can't make up our minds, she had told her, we're such sillies, Bodley and I. One minute it's Miami then the next it's California. Prut! What a pair of old sillies we are, Geraldine!

*  *  *

After dinner, Boniface ate his rice.

—Do you like it, Bonnie? she asked him as she stood there above him, her son beaming, bright-eyed, from ear to ear.

As he spooned big dollops of the dessert into his mouth. He loved rice almost as much as his favorite biscuits. Which, of course were:

—Toytoon Torted!

Then it was time for his game with his “shooter.”

She assisted him with setting up the cardboard box. This was his target. He liked, more than anything, to pretend he was Joe Friday. Joe Friday played in
Dragnet
on the telly. All the men in the barbershop loved it.

—Just the facts, ma'am—that was Joe's catchphrase. That was what Joe was fond of saying.

But Boniface Murray couldn't say that. All he could do was shoot with his shooter, clutching it in a hapless two-handed grip. Scrunching his face as he did so, yelping:

—Whee! he clapped, as the marrowfat pea hit the target, clapping his hands as he squealed: Whee—hooey! Fuck!

Up until now his mother's voice had been a model of restraint.

—Please stop saying that, be a good boy, won't you?

She knew the other boys would make fun when they heard him swearing.

—Fuck! Fuck! Whee—hooey!

The pea went “pop.” As down went the target and her son shrieked ecstatically—before skidding across the floor to go and retrieve it.

—Fuckity! Whumph! Me good—pea!

—Stop it, do you hear! Stop it now, Bonnie!

Suddenly the dessert spoon had leaped into her hand. All went quiet in the room.

—Boniface, now listen. There's a good boy. Boniface, love—do you know you're so good, said his mother.

But Boniface, unfortunately, was staring at her, quivering in disbelief. With his face the color of the rice he'd just been consuming. As the enormity of what his mother had just done began to seep into his slow-witted brain. What had she done? She had pressed the spoon's handle quite severely into his arm. Into the soft flesh of his hairless upper forearm. It hadn't actually hurt him—at least not all that much. But Boniface Murray had already begun to whimper—and the more he inspected the faint abrasion which the piece of cutlery had occasioned he began to sob, helplessly. Before flinging his peashooter away in disdain.